Is anyone else there in the New York area tired of missing out on all of the cool festivals? Chicago, California, and even Tennessee get to host really awesome multi-day events year after year that make me drool over the line-ups. And while New York City can be awesome for it’s nonstop live music scene that no self-respecting act would skip, it is severely lacking in this department. Until now…
From the same people that run the incredible Coachella out on the west coast comes the All Points West Festival this August. I’m not going to bother re-printing the information as you can check out all the relevant facts on that site. While not as impressive as its Western sibling, the lineups are pretty solid. And if this is to become an annual event, they will certainly improve. Personally I hope to make it out for Sunday (Rodrigo y Gabriela AND Amadou & Mariam? Holy crap!), although Friday has a lot of appeal, too (The Go! Team alone would be worth it).
On top of that, next year the producers of ACL, Lollapalooza, plus most of the great English festivals will be adding to the options with the Vineland Festival. And the good news doesn’t end there…
Scores tried to buy the Wellmont Theater in nearby (to me) Montclair, NJ to turn it into a strip club - but they were beat out by… guess who? The Bowery Presents! That’s right, the same group that books shows at Bowery Ballroom, Mercury Lounge, Terminal 5, and Webster Hall will be spending a lot of money to rip out seats and convert the old movie theater into a live music venue. Suddenly there’s a chance that my concert-going days may not be coming to an end with the arrival of my baby girl this summer. Thanks to brooklynvegan for the heads up.
So I’m sitting here listening to some classic Soundgarden, and it sure does take me back. It may seem a tad silly to get so nostalgic when you haven’t even made it through another decade, but albums like Superunknown and the unjustly overlooked Down on the Upside came at a major turning point in my life. Grunge… alternative… loud obnoxious shit… whatever you want to call it, this music was the real thing when my life changed in a rather profound and musical way.
Specifically these sounds take me back to November 16, 1996. A Saturday night when a college buddy of mine and I found ourselves debating about a concert across the river in New York City that night. Of course we didn’t have tickets for Soundgarden. We were both rather inexperienced concert-goers at the time. But we were emboldened by our recent trek to the ultimate show at the time: Pearl Jam. Hell, if we were able to make it to such a huge event as that one, why not give this one a try?
And so we headed for the PATH trains and walked all the way up to Roseland (about 20 some odd blocks) hoping that the scalpers wouldn’t kill us. When the first guy asked for over 100 bucks each, our hopes were almost shot. But we pressed on and watched the prices continue to drop until someone let us know that 20 dollar tickets were still available at the box office.
Holy crap! Was it really this easy? Here we were going to college just a 20 minute train ride from The City, and we could just hope over and gets tickets for a band we loved… I think I was hung up on the days of my sisters camping out all night for Peter Gabriel and didn’t realize just how many concerts went on regularly for us to immerse ourselves in the live experience without being forced to sleep on concrete.
But that was it. We were in. We rocked ourselves silly and moshed like there was no tomorrow. We screamed and shouted and even tried to sing along with “Black Hole Sun”. I helped some girl catch a guitar string and high-fived total strangers. Like I said, it may seem a tad silly, just a smidge over dramatic, but that night changed how we looked at music. We were no longer on the outside looking in. We were banging down the doors and joining in all of the fun.
From then on, we were… cool. Well, at least I used to be cool…